Pussy Riot sign off stay in Games resort by posting video critical of Putin

Russian punk band Pussy Riot have ended their stay in the Olympic city of Sochi by posting a video criticising the Winter Games and President Vladimir Putin.

Band members have been filming in Sochi since Sunday and have had violent run-ins with authorities.

They have been detained several times, and on Wednesday militia members attacked the group with horsewhips as they tried to perform under an Olympic sign.

The band said they were returning to Moscow to attend the verdicts in a trial of 20 people arrested after clashes on the eve of Mr Putin’s inauguration to a third term in 2012.

The performance-art collective, made up of a loose grouping of feminists, has called for a boycott of the Sochi Olympics, arguing that Mr Putin has exceeded his authority and is restricting human rights.

Pussy Riot’s Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alekhina spent nearly two years in prison on charges of hooliganism for their protest in Moscow’s main cathedral in 2012.

Pussy Riot’s video is called Putin will teach you how to love the motherland.